This blog will present news items about the motion picture business, with emphasis on lower budget, independent film in most cases. Some reviews or commentaries on specific films, with emphasis on significance (artistic or political) or comparison, are presented. Note: No one pays me for these reviews; they are not "endorsements"!

VideoBar

About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

Friday, April 15, 2016

"Paths of the Soul": pilgrims go on an amazing strenuous journey to Lhasa, Tibet, kowtowing all the way

“Paths of the Soul” (2015), by (Chinese film, editing and producing from Beijing, in Tibetan) director Yang Zhang, traces a pilgrimage of a few Tibetan families(inspired by Nyima) to Lhasa over 1200 kilometers, and then beyond into the Himalaya, over ten months. The journey may actually have begun in western China.

When I was growing up in the 1950s, I was used to thinking of Tibet as a separate country (as we were taught then in grade school). But actually, it was taken over by force in 1950 by Communist China and is regarded as an “autonomous region”, essentially a large province of China (more or less analogous to the Northwest Territories or Yukon in Canada, or Alaska and Hawaii before statehood).

China has brutally suppressed Tibetan dissent and desire for independence, and tolerated its Buddhist religion, which is probably an economic asset.

The film is stunning. It deserves to be presented in Imax 3-D. It is well shot, with sharp detail and subtle natural earth tones, in standard aspect, but has the look of 70mm film. It comes as close to giving the filmgoer an experience of visiting another planet on Earth and living with an alien, communitarian culture for two full hours, as is possible in movies.

The families make camp every night and sleep on top of one another, inside makeshift quarters that defy description. But the most amazing part of the experience is the kowtowing, where the pilgrims bow and prostate themselves, using boards under their wrists, and making forward movement that looks like a combination of skateboarding on your arms and military low-crawling. The procession is led by a richshaw driven by a tractor. When the tractor gets struck by a speeding car maybe 50 miles from Lhasa, the celebrants simply roll it the rest of the way by hand. (Earlier, the tractor loses a screw and throws an oil pan leak, but the film doesn’t explain how it got fixed. But the towns along the Tibetan road are more modern than one expects, and there is more car and truck traffic than one expects.) Near one town, by a spectacular mountain lake, farmers plough an overnight spring snow into the ground. There is a curious image of a ragged rainbow-like flag over the road as they enter a couple towns. Their vocal prayer chants make for a strange, atonal music.

There is also an amazing sequence where a baby is delivered, on camera, by doctors in a Tibetan clinic.

At the end, an unmarried man, an uncle of many of the children who had raised them (there is a subtle hint he is gay) passes away overnight in the communal tent and is given a grand funeral.

The alien images in the film are too many to count. In one scene, there are two separate cloud decks against the mountains. In another, a road has four switchbacks in one camera shot. A deep canyon is almost like a tunnel, pummeling he parade with a rock slide.

The official site is here (Icarus films, with many production companies from China).

The film showed to a sold out audience at Filmfest DC at Landmark E Street tonight, but in a smaller auditorium. It probably got a full 5 out of 5 stars from one most tickets (I lost mine). It was a major selection at TIFF (Toronto).

Wikipedia attribution link for picture of Tibetan lake by Reurinkjan, under CCSA 2.0

Analytics

Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy for billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com

If you require any more information or have any questions about our privacy policy, please feel free to contact us by email at JBoushka@aol.com.

At billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com , the privacy of my visitors is of extreme importance to me. This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com and how it is used.

Log Files Like many other Web sites, billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com makes use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol ( IP ) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider ( ISP ), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement around the site, and gather demographic information. IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.

Cookies and Web Beacons billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com does not use cookies.

DoubleClick DART Cookie

.:: Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com .
.:: Google's use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to your users based on their visit to billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com and other sites on the Internet.
.:: Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy at the following link.

Some of our advertising partners may use cookies and web beacons on my site. My advertising partners include ....... Google Adsense

These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to the advertisements and links that appear on billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com send directly to your browsers. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. Other technologies ( such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons ) may also be used by the third-party ad networks to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and / or to personalize the advertising content that you see.

billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.

You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information on their practices as well as for instructions about how to opt-out of certain practices. billsmoviereviews.blogspot.com 's privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites.

If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browsers' respective websites.

Especially for EU visitors: This site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services, to personalize ads and to analyze traffic. Information about your use of this site is shared with Google. By using this site, you agree to its use of cookies. For more info visit https://www.google.com/policies/technologies/cookies/